I had an interesting one in campaign mode the other day. As Julii I sent a force to relieve one a town (can't remember tha name - begins with B and is north of Thessalonica) besieged by the Thracians. They had a lot of heavy cavalry, missile cavalry and spearmen and after standing off for a long time I got impatient, went in too quickly, got routed, lost most of my equites, a lot of infantry and with no movement points left was a bit stuck. This earned my general (0 or 1 bronze chevron - not sure, 2 command stars, just been fortunate enough to recover from the plague) the indicisive attacker trait.

On the Thracians turn they moved in for the kill. I had only my general, 2 Hestati units, 1 unit of velites and 1 unit of wardogs. All were under half strength and I had no option to flee. I hid the wardogs in some trees, lined up the general, Hestatii and Velites in a defensive formation at the top of a hill and sent off the remaining equites for some distracting running.

Once the Thracians were in range I released the wardogs and got the equites to do hit and run on some of the spearmen. Eventually the equites routed, the wardogs got used up and the Thracians came for my vastly outnumbered force. The enemy general charged my Hestatii and I pulled off the Velites to one side, doing some missile damage. Had my general charge from the other direction and pretty soon the enemy general initially routed and was then killed. Unfortunately this meant heavy losses to my side and the rest of the Thracians moved in, killing or routing everyone apart from the velites who were in skirmish mode and kept it up for a good 5 minutes before routing themselves. I even got a message along the lines of 'your general has fallen, fighting like a true Roman' and thought I was pretty much wiped out.

Came to the end of the battle and the generals unit had got 8 XP. 'Shame I can't use that', I thought but noticed there were a few recoveries. Anyway once back in the campaign map I noticed my general was alive and well in the nearest town with 3 silver chevrons. He's survived plague and apparrently getting killed in battle and he's still only in his 20s. Starting to think the guy might have a bright future.